Tales from the Crypt Keeper
by sarcasticallydelicious
Summary: The grave usually marks the end of a tale. For Yorick, it is the middle and the beginning.
1. Chapter 1

Jaundiced adj. 1: affected with or as if with a disease characterized by yellow pigmentation of the skin, 2: exhibiting or influenced by envy, distaste, or hostility

* * *

The first thing Yorick noticed was the mist, thick and low and wet in his dry mouth. It clung to his lungs strangely as it filled his chest. It was as if he had forgotten how to breathe.

He reached up with a heavy hand, reaching over the dirt ledge and grabbing an exposed root. He closed his fingers around it, joints protesting. The roots seemed to grasp back, but he must have imagined it. He pulled.

Yorick clambered out of the hole, his entire body cursing and groaning in protest. Somehow, he managed to pull himself out and stand.

He did not recognize this place. The mist was lighter above the ground, though the sky was a solid span of grey cloud. The twisting trees' spare leaves were a dull green, and the many rocks jutted out of the dark ground at harsh angles. The air barely moved, swirling just enough to create currents in the mist. The air was silent besides the occasional rustle of the leaves and a murmur so low he could not be sure he wasn't imagining it.

The hole Yorick had crawled out of had apparently been meant as a grave. The grave keeper would have thought he merited one done at least slightly better.

His shovel stood at the hole's head. He walked to it stiffly and pulled it from the ground. Its weight was the first familiar thing about this place.

This was not the family tomb; that he knew for sure. And he had died, hadn't he? A look at his hands told him that too was true. No one in life could achieve quite this level of greyish green.

There was nothing else for him here. Shouldering his spade, he wandered off in the direction of the whispers.

How long he followed the breathy murmurs he could not say, the sky barely lightening or darkening as he trudged through the mist. But his legs did not tire, so he simply continued walking.

He had nowhere else to go.

* * *

A light through the fog caught his attention and he lumbered towards it.

The lantern hung from a crooked pole thrust into the ground. The telltale scrape of a shovel rang through the chill air as he approached, punctuating the whispers.

Yorick could see the life rolling off the man like rain into an open grave. Something within him twinged, perhaps the heart which, like his lunges, had forgotten its purpose. He could feel the blood sitting dusty in his veins, though that may have been just as imagined as the hushed voices emanating from the ground.

"Hello there, stranger." Yorick spoke neutrally, but his voice rumbled low and menacing.

If the man was surprised by Yorick's state of undeath, he gave no sign. Instead he leaned on his own shovel, peering off at Yorick with appraising eyes.

"And hello to you, new shade." He tipped his wide-brimmed hat, which served more to further hide his eyes than to give any semblance of normality, "Don't see many of your kind in this corner of the Shadow Isles."

The Shadow Isles? Yorick had heard of the place. Every gravedigger had. Of course, like all the others, he had thought it little more than a bedtime story.

Rather than think too much on that, he looked down at the disturbed ground at the man's feet. This, at least, he recognized immediately, though the echoing hisses were new.

"And what are you doing here, human? I was under the impression the living stayed clear of this place."

"Maybe I like a bit of danger." The man's teeth glinted in the lantern light. "Nothing wrong with a little adventure, eh?"

Something whispered beneath the churned ground. Yorick leaned down to listen.

"Are you all right there, friend?" The man called, voice distant.

Yorick put a finger to his lips, gesturing for him to be quiet, though the whispers seemed to bypass his ears entirely to murmur at the back of his mind. Still, they became unquestionably louder as he leaned closer to the earth.

His companion was quiet, but only for a moment. "You know, shade, that's a nice shovel you have there. Do you mind if I take a look?"

Yorick nodded absently, listening intently as he tried to decipher the voices' words.

Something hard smashed into the back of Yorick's head, stunning him. A second knocked him off balance, slicing into his clammy skin and leaving a chunk of it flapping as he stumbled back.

He staggered around, arms raised, to face his attacker.

"Couldn't just leave it alone, could you shade?" The man snarled between strikes. Yorick's heavy shovel swung through the mist, sending it off in spiraling currents. "Well, there's room in that grave for two, even if neither of you will be in there long."

The whispers escalated, hissing around him. Yorick could hardly hear his attacker over them, charging the air around them.

The blows kept falling, pressing him back. They did not hurt, Yorick realized, though they tore through his skin and cracked him bones. So he reached out, and the haft of his shovel fell into his outstretched hand.

The whispers stopped, and a massive beast rose from the ground beneath him.

It may have been human, once, though its flesh and bones seemed proportioned just close enough to wonder, but at the same time completely inhuman. Its arms were too long by far, and any human jaw would have to be dislocated many times over to fit that many teeth. Elbow and spine bones jutted sharply, stretching the skin painful taught. Its eyes, though, burned with what could only be a human desire for vengeance.

The living man backed away, horrified, as the ghoul advanced on him. Backing him into a rocky outcropping where there was no hope of escape, it loomed over him with its emaciated body.

But it did not strike. Instead, it looked back at Yorick through the wispy mist, questioning with unvoiced whispers.

Yorick turned his shovel in his hand, considering. He had used it to bury so many in life, and it had remained unfulfilled.

He supposed he could just keep burying in death. He could think of no other way to fill his time.

He nodded.

* * *

Yorick buried the man in a grave not far from his ghoul's, the thing watching over him the whole time. It was a better grave than the cad deserved, but Yorick could not bear to drop the Mori family standard even in death. He shared more with his clients now than he had in life. Why shouldn't his work reflect that?


	2. Chapter 2

Umpteen adj. very many: indefinitely numerous

* * *

Cheh. Ffp. Cheh. Ffp. Cheh. Ffp.

Yorick planted his shovel in the newly displaced pile of dirt and hefted the corpse into the freshly dug hole. The cold body hit the bottom with dull splash, sinking only the slightest bit into little water that had already accumulated at the bottom of the pit.

The ghoul leaned over, arranging the body as someone, at some point, had taught him to. He could not remember who this was, or if he should be saying something over the body, or feeling anything beside the patter of rain on his back.

It was his seventeen thousand, three hundred and fifty third burial. With all the things he had forgotten over the ages, the number had always been clear in his memory.

"What is your name, friend?" Yorick asked the corpse as he began to replace the earth over the silent body. "Jaelen? A fine name. I will make sure your headstone reflects that."

He continued his work and his conversation. Such professional consultations had made up the bulk of his interactions since he had left the Shadow Isles for the realm of the living. The dead were so much more talkative here, and more friendly. Perhaps it was because their spirits were so much younger and less tired.

One of his ghouls signaled him, its voice reverberating through his being. He threw the final shovelful of dirt onto the fresh grave and pulled, dragging a stone from the ground at its head. A crude grave, but a more fitting passing for the noble carpenter than simply being left on the side of the road.

Sodden footsteps approached. Yorick quieted his ghoul with a thought; the living could do nothing to him now, particularly small, tired ones such as this.

"What are you doing?" The warmskin was thin and frail, looking wan in the light of Yorick's lantern. The thing brandished a pitchfork before him as if it should elicit some reaction. "What have you done with my father?"

"He has accepted death's embrace." Yorick replied, voice growling out of his dry throat. "I merely sent him on his way and memorialized his passing."

The warmskin shook terribly, enough to remind Yorick of the effect of cold, if not the actual sensation. The creature stumbled forward, pitchfork hanging forgotten in his hands, to stand before the grave.

"You…You did this?" the thing asked, voice cracking. It fell to its knees, mumbling something obscured by the rain. Its fingers traced the crude name etched in the rough stone.

Yorick turned to go. Likely he had been taught things to say for such times, but they had long since fled his memory. His ghouls had already located another body a league up the road.

"W-Wait."

When Yorick returned his gaze to the warmskin, it stood once more, though the shaking had not subsided.

It took a shuddering breath. "Thank you. He…he…" The thing stopped again, biting at its fleshy lips with its teeth. "I can't pay you, but is there anything…? Food, or a roof for the night…?"

What did he want? Yorick had not considered such a thing in this context, being asked by a single, fragile warmskin he had simply happened across. He had done nothing but his job.

"The spirit has passed on," Yorick spoke, the unfamiliar words falling practiced from his throat. "I, Yorick Mori, have seen him laid to rest."

He hefted his shovel and lumbered away, leaving the warmskin to the darkness of the realm of the living.


	3. Chapter 3

Abulia n. abnormal lack of ability to act or to make decisions

* * *

"So, Mr. Yorick, sir, I'm sorry to, uh, inform you that we will be disabling your Omen of Death ability until further notice."

The junior summoner could not stop fidgeting, running the hem of his robe between his fingers in a repetitive nervous movement. His company was not helping, if only by sitting there as a massive, unmoving, undead lump. His corpse was not the problem, though. It was the too-human eyes staring out from within it.

A low rumble came from the Gravekeeper's throat. Perhaps it was meant as a laugh, but it just made the summoner's grip on his robe turn from abrading to a white-knuckled death grip.

"The powers of the grave are not to be so lightly trifled with, summoner. I told you this when I joined your League."

Fumbling through the tome before him, the summoner eventually found the page he was looking for. "It's true we did not fully appreciate that when you entered the League, but as you are aware, the conditions of you becoming a champion required that you share with us information on the Shadow Isles. We had hoped this knowledge would allow us to better control your powers on the Rift, but as you know, this has not been the case.

He did know. Something in the Rift's magic had interfered with his ability to capture the dead, leaving them in a constant state of semi-resurrection, allowing them life just long enough to experience a painful death, over, and over, and over again. He could still see the damage of them on several of his fellow champions when he faced them in battle. This action was meant to prevent a rioting mob, one of the few human societal events he knew more intimately now that he was no longer one of them.

"Have you noticed, summoner," he said instead, "that as you at the League have been taking more interest in the Shadow Isles, the Shadow Isles have been taking more interest in you? That perhaps the more champions you accept from that place, the more its magics and yours become intertwined?"

The summoner had frozen completely now, face white and eyes wide.  
"Were you surprised that it was so easy for you to tie the Twisted Treeline to the Fields of Justice? Know that you can't mettle with such powers without them meddling back."

Yorick hefted his shovel. The summoner flinched back, but the Gravekeeper simply placed it on his shoulder. "You simply must work with that, now. I have signed the contract with you, and will uphold my end. But at the same time, you cannot remove me. It appears we are stuck with one another. I suggest you make the best of it and be more careful in the future, just as I will."


End file.
